Generally, a hearing device is used to improve the hearing of a hearing impaired person. Very often, a hearing device is only then used when the hearing loss of a patient has already reached a rather high degree. It has been shown that it is advantageous to use a hearing device even though only a mild hearing loss can be observed.
It is known that mild hearing losses are especially demanding regarding sound quality and hearing benefit because unaided hearing is always a strong alternative to aided hearing.
A typical solution taking into account a mild hearing loss is a small hearing device which is openly coupled to the ear canal of a person. These kinds of hearing devices are adjusted by a professional (e.g. an audiologist) to the individual needs. These hearing devices typically have means to recognize and distinguish different kinds of sound and process them differently. The professional can adjust the processing behavior for the distinguished sound classes, in some products one can separately adjust several hearing programs for different sound classes which are automatically selected and activated by the hearing device during usage according to the varying acoustic situations.
The acceptance of known hearing devices used to correct mild hearing losses is still rather low. Many customers reject the solution because the achieved hearing benefit such as improved audibility and intelligibility is not in a good relation to the cost of the hearing device. Besides the costs there are other reasons for rejection the use of a hearing device for correcting a mild hearing loss:                artifacts, e.g. noise, distortion, reverberation-like sound quality due to a mixture of direct sound and the delayed sound coming from the hearing device receiver (known as comb filter effect, in particular when both sounds have roughly the same level);        annoyance due to changes of sounds without hearing benefit;        maintenance, e.g. costs for batteries and for cleaning, insertion of hearing device;        expenditure in connection with getting the hearing device, e.g. the assessment and the fitting process.        
These grounds for rejecting a hearing device compete with the fact that unaided hearing is just a bit worse than hearing with a hearing device.
It is therefore one object of the present invention to provide a hearing device, which does at least not have one of the above-mentioned drawbacks.